STEVE HANSEN last night sent out a "don't panic" message following Wales' unconvincing World Cup victory over Tonga.

But he admitted his team would need to improve dramatically in order to win Saturday's crucial Pool D clash with Italy and book a place in the quarter-finals.

Wales were pushed the whole way by the tenacious Tongans at Canberra Stadium yesterday and were clinging on at the end before the final whistle sounded to signal a 27-20 win.

Hansen rated the performance as "about a five or a six" and acknowledged there is plenty of work to do in the build-up to the meeting with the Azzurri at the ground in five days' time.

"It goes without saying that we will have to step up our performance to a significant degree to beat Italy," said the Kiwi coach.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that if we play like that we won't win. But the good thing is I know that we can step it up.

"So there is no point us panicking and dropping heads about it. It wasn't a top-drawer performance, but in the past when we haven't had top-drawer performances we haven't been good enough to win.

"That tells me that we have improved. To play poorly and win is a big step, rather than playing poorly and losing. I was pleased with the win.

"We weren't complacent. It's always difficult when you have a victory by 40 points, as we did against Canada, and when you've got such a big game like Italy coming up.

"People's thoughts tend to drift a little bit. But from that point of view it was a perfect game.

"We didn't play extremely well, but we still got four points, which is what we came for and we have got plenty to work on coming into the Italy game.

"We know if we win that game, even if it is only by a point, that we will qualify. Whoever wins that one is obviously going to be in the driving seat.

"Having watched Italy against Tonga, they were a lot more aggressive than we were.

"But you can't make the mistake of taking results from one game into another.

"It's on the day. I know that we will come here and we will ready to play them."

Going through the different aspects of Wales' performance against the Tongans, Hansen highlighted what he saw as the pluses and minuses.

"Our line-out was OK, as was our scrum at times, but we didn't put enough pressure on their ball," he said. "At times our kicking game was good and then at other times it was very poor. We didn't kick very intelligently at times I don't think.

"In the last 20 or 30 minutes, we gave them a lot of ball to run back at us and they seemed to get rather excited about it. We will learn a lot of lessons from that.

"The sad thing was once we got a bit of a buffer we lacked a bit of concentration and let them back into the game, particularly so after Martyn Williams' try. That's something we have to go away and work on. Right near the end I was worried the game might be slipping through our fingers. I thought, 'Here we go.'

"But thankfully we came through it and the players will grow from it. Let's not take anything away from Tonga. I thought at times they played particularly well - a lot better than they did in their first game against Italy.

"Most of their players were having their second game of the tournament.

"We changed our side, rightly or wrongly - some people may think we shouldn't have - but I said from day one that we can't be successful if we play the identical team in every game. "We had a game plan as far as selection goes and I think we have got a lot out of the first two matches as far as who is performing and who isn't and we will pick the side accordingly."

Hansen said he was confident centre Sonny Parker would be fit to face Italy, having pulled out of yesterday's game with muscle spasms in his lower back, to be replaced by Iestyn Harris.

"He should be available. No disrespect to Tonga, but if it had been a real crunch game he would have probably been able to play," he said. "Rather than risk him, we were confident enough to bring Iestyn in after his top performance against Canada in Melbourne."